Creating Forecasts

How Can I...up

Set up Fiscal Year

The first settings to configure when creating a forecast for the first time, is the Fiscal Year. Depending on your organization's financial cycle, you can specify the month the financial year begins.

To set up Fiscal Year

Click Setup > Organization Settings > Fiscal Year.

In the Fiscal Year page, select the Fiscal Start Month from the drop down list.

Choose Start Month or End Month.

Click Save.

Note

By default, fiscal year is configured as January to December.

Let's say your fiscal year starts in April 2013 and ends in March 2014. If you choose to name the fiscal year based on the start month, the year name will be displayed as 2013 (in reports and other mentions) and if you choose to name the fiscal year based on the end month, the year name will be displayed as 2014.

Create Forecasts

Forecasts are created to help every individual in the sales team, who has opportunities assigned to them and their managers.

Note

By default, the person who creates the forecast owns it.

Forecasts can be created for each quarter of the Fiscal Year.

You can create forecasts for a specific quarter only once. However, you can modify the existing forecast details.

You cannot customize the fields in the forecast module.

To create forecasts

In the Forecast module, click New Forecast.

In the Create Forecast page, select the Year and Quarter from the respective drop-down lists.

Click Next.

In the Forecast Details section, specify the following details:

Enter the target Quota for each month. The target quota is the same value entered in the Amount field in the Potentials module.

Specify the Committed Amount and Best Case Amount for each month's target quota.

Click Save.

Associate Forecasts with Other Records

Once the forecast is created, you can add potentials to each month. When the deal is closed it will automatically appear under forecast history. All the potentials created will show under each individual sales person's monthly forecast list for follow-up. In the Forecast Details page, the details displayed are:

List of Potentials for each month: Displays the list of potentials, the associated accounts and the corresponding forecast details for the month. You can also add new potentials to the month.

Switch to New Forecast

Here is what is “new” in the New Forecasts

Track the performance of individual roles/territories in the hierarchy.

Track the performance of each user in the role/territory.

Choose between the monthly or quarterly forecast options.

Set targets for sub roles and its users in the hierarchy, once the forecast is created..

Choose your forecast target from any numeric field in the Potentials module. In the old forecasts, it is based on the Amount field.

Set sales targets for all the users in your role if you are the role manager.

Set individual targets for role managers and the other users in the role, apart from an overall sales target for the role.

Navigate easily to access the required data.

Use the Compute option to calculate the status of forecast for any given month/quarter. It calculates the target achieved, potentials in pipeline, shortage in the pipeline, etc.

Get notified when there is a mismatch in the target forecasted. For example, the role's target amount is USD 10000 and the targets for the sub roles are USD 5000 and USD 4000. In this case, you will be notified at once of the mismatch of USD 1000 in the target.

Identify the Star Performers in your team with the Star indicators.

Keep abreast of shortages in the pipeline. Know what percentage of the target amount is not in the pipeline for a given month/quarter.

Be assured that the sales targets for a given role will be maintained for reference even when a user is moved from one role to another.

On Enabling the New Forecast

Best Case and Committed Amount will not be available. Instead you will have other parameters to calculate, such as, target amount, achieved amount, pipeline potential, target achieved in percentage, etc. See Also Role Based New Forecasts

The existing forecasts will be removed. You will not be able to access the forecasts for the previous months.

Forecast History (a history of changes made to forecasts) will not be maintained.